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The first Intonation Music
Festival was guaranteed to be a tough act to follow. Along with the retooled
Lollapalooza, last summer's two-day destination festival in Union Park was a
test case to prove that diverse and challenging underground music can work
in the city parks.
An artistic and commercial
success, Intonation Mach I drew nearly 15,000 people per day, paving the way
for even more music this summer. Without the powerful promotional engine of
the Webzine Pitchfork -- which this year split off to run its own festival
in the West Side park on July 29-30 -- attendance at Intonation's encore was
down, with 10,000-12,000 people out Saturday for the first of two days of
concerts.
Yet the weather, the
organization and the vibe couldn't have been better, and while there wasn't
one shining moment that symbolized the event as well as the neighborhood
children who joined the Go! Team to dance onstage in 2005, there were
certainly plenty of musical highlights, as well as one emotional musical
rebirth.
Erickson
returns
As he fought a long, sad
battle with schizophrenia exacerbated by psychedelic drug use, Roky Erickson
largely avoided the music world for the last two decades: Before Saturday,
he had not performed outside his native Texas since 1982, and he had never
played in Chicago. Encouraged by his younger brother to seek the right
medications and take control of his life, the singer is a new man at age 58
-- healthy, happy and ready to reclaim one of the richest legacies in rock
history.
Erickson beamed as he
took the stage and basked in the adulation of fans who never thought they'd
see him perform. Backed by a crack band of his Austin peers led by the fiery
guitarist Cam King, he delivered a generous set that included many of his
best songs, the titles of which illuminate the frightening struggles of his
past: "Don't Shake Me Lucifer," "I Think Up Demons," "Don't Slander Me" and,
of course, the 13th Floor Elevators' classic 1966 hit, "You're Gonna Miss
Me."
Erickson's voice,
notable for combining the best attributes of his heroes James Brown, Little
Richard and Buddy Holly, was in fine form, its power diminished only
slightly by the passing of time, and he augmented King with ferocious guitar
riffs and churning rhythms. In contrast to Brian Wilson, who battled similar
problems before his recent comeback, Erickson seemed genuinely enthusiastic
about returning to the stage, much more involved in the music and much
happier to be surrounded by fans who hugged him, took photos with him and
left with autographs.
The
height of heavy
The other stellar
musical moments of day one included the Bay Area trio High on Fire and the
long-running Japanese noise-rock band the Boredoms. With a terse "Hello,
f---ers," stoner rock god Matt Pike took the stage with High on Fire and
proceeded to mercilessly pummel a generally meek crowd with some of the best
truly heavy music being made today -- monolithic in its intensity, but with
an unparalleled fluidity in its massive grooves. Pike dedicated his song
"The Face of Oblivion" to Erickson, one of his inspirations, and the trio
later watched the Texas legend from the side of the stage.
For their part, the
Boredoms have reinvented themselves with an emphasis on incredibly complex
yet ever-flowing polyrhythms. They set up in a circle with three drum sets,
including one attacked by veteran member Yoshimi Yokota, and bandleader
Yamataka eYe jumped, screamed, howled and added a disorienting sonic swirl
of looped samples and analog synthesizer.
Wu Tang Clan veteran
Ghostface offered nothing new during his performance, but his hard-core
gangsta rap remains some of the best music that genre has produced. After 45
minutes, he'd shown us everything he had, but the set reached a giddy climax
when he began pulling women from the crowd and ended up gyrating with two
dozen ladies who clearly weren't put off by his swagger or sexist
braggadocio.
Swedish-based
Argentinean guitarist, singer and songwriter Jose Gonzalez provided a
mid-afternoon chill-out with a beautiful set of acoustic folk songs,
including an inspired cover by Kylie Minogue, and the evening ended with a
one-two punch of some of the best in British hip-hop, with Cockney bad boy
Mike Skinner/the Streets, fresher and more energetic in concert than on his
third album, taking the stage after a spirited set by Louise Harman/Lady
Sovereign, whose charmingly bratty persona and celebratory sass masked a
relative paucity of musical ideas.
Dude
sings like a lady
The rest of the acts
were more generic and less inspiring. Favourite Sons kicked things off at 1
p.m. with a rote set of New Wave revival music, heavy on the Smiths; Erase
Errata tore through some riot grrrl punk, with a lot of attitude but little
melody, and Devin the Dude belied his reputation as a funny and fluid rapper
with too much singing on too many slow jams, including a weird cover of
James Taylor's "Handy Man."
Too much,
not enough
Chicago's 90 Day Men
injected too much Rick Wakeman keyboard virtuosity into their math rock;
Montreal's Chromeo had one intriguing idea -- mixing vintage disco and
modern hip-hop -- but they flogged it for 45 minutes, and the once-hyped
Stills upped the quotient of heartland rock in their music but still failed
to distinguish their unremarkable, heard-it-all-before jangle-pop.
From an organizational
standpoint, the only downsides of Intonation II came via two of its
corporate sponsors. Vice Records did an admirable job curating the acts, but
its sister enterprises, Vice magazine and Vice TV, injected their obnoxious,
base and unfunny brand of humor into the proceedings via the promotional
literature and emceeing by some of the asinine cast members from the
mock-reality cult film, "Windy City Heat."
Also an unwelcome
presence: BBC America, which hired a troop of scantily clad models to chase
a Benny Hill lookalike (who didn't actually look like the late British
comedian) through the field throughout the day. If only we'd had Monty
Python's giant foot to stamp out these annoyances.
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